Wrapping up the Week of March 20 - The Traveling Part!

Whew! What a busy week! 

We had planned to go to my parents' house on Sunday, but then there was a chance of snow on Sunday, so we decided to beat the snow (we didn't get any) and drove down after church on Sabbath.

The nice part of that was that we had a nice, quiet day at Mama and Papa's on Sunday. "Mr Cat" came out to say hi. He's a brother (I think) to Ashlyn's cat, Moccasin, and it's funny because their coloring is so similar, but his face is very different. He seemed to enjoy getting lots of love from the girls.  Little Bit also enjoyed riding her bike a bunch. She almost got up the courage to learn to ride without training wheels. 

Monday was "Ice Cream for Breakfast Day" normally I just buy some ice cream and call it good, but Mama made chocolate waffles to have with the ice cream. Yum!  After breakfast Lexie and Ashlyn and I headed out for a fun day at friends' house. As always, the kids spent the day playing in the woods, and with the animals.  This time Little Bit opted to spend the day with Mama & Papa instead of coming with us. They rode metro into Washington DC so Papa could get some National Park stamps he wanted. And while they were there, they went to the Rosslyn metro station to ride the really long escalator (207 ft) there (because what kid doesn't love riding super long escaltors?!?). So she had a fun day too.

Tuesday was the reason for our trip to Mama and Papa's! Little Bit's seventh birthday (which was the 26th). When her sisters turned 7, we went to the American Girl Store in NYC. So we had to follow the tradition and go to American Girl for Little Bit's 7th birthday too. But now there's also an American Girl store in Northern VA which has the huge advantage of being to drive to it instead of navigating the subways of NYC.  As an added bonus, it meant my Dad could drop us off and go do his own thing, since spending a few hours in a 100% pink & girly store isn't really his kind of thing, he went and collected National Park passport stamps instead. Little Bit spent the first while just running around looking at everything. One thing I liked a LOT better about the NY store (when we were there, they may have changed it), is that everything for one doll was in one area. So we could go to the Kit area and see her and all her accessories on display, and then choose the doll & accessories Lexie wanted and be done with it. The DC store had things scattered. I think the idea was that similar accessories were in the same area. For example, in one area there was a display of each doll wearing her nightgown/pajamas with her bed and "bedtime accessories" set. But that meant that, to find Samantha (Little Bit's doll of choice) and all her accessories, we had to go all over hunting down the various accessories. It wasn't a big deal, since Little Bit and Lexie had gone online ahead of time and figured out what she wanted, but if we'd gone in there without having researched, it would have been very frustrating. 

After we made our purchases, we went to tea at the American Girl Bistro. I had called and made a reservation and I KNOW that not only did we say our reservation was for tea, but the woman on the phone repeated back to me that it was for tea. However, apparently that information was not passed on to the actual restaurant. The website says to call an 800# to make reservations rather than calling the individual store directly (after this experience, if I ever do it again, I'll be calling the store directly).  The people at the restaurant did their best (and said we were actually the second table that day who'd made reservations for tea and that information hadn't been passed on. Our reservation was for 2:15 and "tea time" doesn't start until 2:00, so it sounds like ALL the reservations were not being made properly), but because the "tea treats" are typically prepared in advance AND to further complicate things, we'd requested vegetarian, we did have quite a long wait. I was impressed though, I was expecting that "vegetarian" would just mean they'd leave off the meat items and maybe give us more of the non-meat options to make up for it but they actually created a vegetarian equivalent for the meat options. There was a miniature veggie burger to replace "Josefina's rancho burger" and a little heart shaped grill cheese sandwich to replace Julie's "pigs in a blanket". 

After we left Tyson's Corner, we took a rather circuitous route back to Mama and Papa's house by way of Columbia, and our all time favorite Chinese restaurant, Hunan Manor! YUM!!! While the heavy beltway traffic is something I most definitely do NOT miss about living in Maryland, I do, very much, miss getting to go to Hunan regularly! When Rodney & I were first married I worked a few miles from the restaurant and when I wasn't traveling, my co-workers and I went there often for lunch. Now it's a rare, much appreciated treat.

Once we got back to Mama and Papa's house Little Bit, with help from her sisters, got right to work checking out all Samantha's accessories.  Once they'd opened everything up and set it all up and generally checked it out thoroughly, it was bedtime.

So, they changed Samantha into her new nightgown (that Lexie sewed for her) and made a bed for her on the sofa.

Wednesday, the girls packed up all of Samantha's stuff and all of their stuff and loaded it all into the car, and we headed home.  . . and I think I'll stop here and do a separate post about the rest of the week :) 

Wrapping Up the Last Week of Winter

We've been enjoying the spring-like weather this last week or so of winter (and now that we're to the first day of spring . . . Brrrrr!!) The girls are finally getting to enjoy our nice big yard and I'm trying to figure out how best to add a garden without detracting from the nice big open expanse of grass for playing in :) 

We also had our first grill out of the season. I think I want to move the grill to the back deck, but it works nicely on the front porch too. Either place is much more convenient than in the driveway at our old house, which involved carrying all the food down the back steps from the kitchen and carrying all the dirty dishes back up the steps afterward. 

Last fall we were supposed to take Lexie's rental violin in for a "check-up" but with moving and such (actually not only did WE move, but the violin shop moved too so things were hectic for all of us), one thing led to another and we FINALLY took her violin in week before last. As I suspected, he immediately confirmed that she had outgrown her 3/4 size and was ready for a full size. Which led to the discussion of renting vs buying. He showed her 3 different violins and she played them all but decided to think about it before making a final decision.

So, we went back in on Tuesday and after much playing of all the violins, and thinking she chose her violin and bow. The violin is approximately 100 years old, from Germany. The bow is also old, refurbished (apparently different bows sound different, and will sound different depending who's playing them. I have to admit, to my decidedly NOT musical ear, all the violins and bows sounded the same, so I was no help). Interestingly, from the first time she played the various violins, the shop owner said that this was the one that was the best fit for her, but she had to decide it for herself.

Thankfully we managed to do this while Mama and Papa were here, helping us get our old house ready to put on the market, so Little Bit got to spend the evening with Mama and Papa's undivided attention instead of being bored at the violin shop for the almost 2 hours that we were there.

Little Bit and I went to a friend's house during Lexie & Ashlyn's music lesson this week. The plan was to let Little Bit and her friend listen to the first Herb Fairies story, and then go hunt for Chickweed in their yard, but their attention span isn't long enough to listen through the whole story in one setting, and it was rainy so not a good day for harvesting. So they listened to part of it and then ran off to play.  Still a fun playdate, definitely preferable to Little Bit than grocery shopping during music lessons :)

Much to Ashlyn's delight, the same friend asked if we wanted to watch their dog on Wednesday. They were going to be out of the house all day and figured he'd rather come snuggle with us than be home alone. He got much love and attention :) And when they came to pick him up, Lexie got to show off her new violin, and Little Bit got to play with friends, so it worked out well for all of us :)

As soon as Little Bit decided on the American Girl doll she wants for her birthday, Lexie started talking about sewing doll clothes for it. She found patterns online of most of the original clothes (from when American Girl was owned by Pleasant Company), and spent a good bit of last week sewing Samantha's birthday dress. She got it done, all ready for Samantha to wear on Little Bit's birthday next weekend! Now she's busy again, working on Samantha's nightgown :)

I think that pretty much sums up our week. We finished the week off with the threat of snow, the perfect way to welcome spring, right?

Busy Days

As always seems to be the case, when life gets busy, blogging is one of the things that tends to not happen. . . which means that, when I have time to blog, I don't have much to blog about and when I have lots to blog about, I don't have time to blog . . . sigh . . . 

Here's at least a brief summary of our recent adventures . . . 

A couple weeks ago we spent a day at Franklin Institute (a museum in Philadelphia). Their special exhibit was on Egypt. One of the hands-on exhibits was trying to put "pottery shards" together into a bowl or vase. It was pretty cool, the "pottery shards" were magnetic and the form that they were supposed to put the "shards" on was also magnetic. Lexie and Ashlyn worked on it for quite awhile. I have to say, I was rather annoyed at the employee/volunteer in that area, we're not talking about toddlers here, they're almost 13, old enough to figure it out by trial and error but she kept telling them if they put a piece in the wrong spot or putting a piece in for them. URGH!!! But they enjoyed it despite the unwanted help. Little Bit "helped" Lexie a little, but pretty quickly moved on to other parts of the exhibit.

Like riding the camel. What's fun is we have pictures of Lexie & Ashlyn riding the same camel (or a very similar one) at a the COSI museum in Ohio when they were a few months younger than Little Bit is now (see them here).  How fun is that? 

Little Bit also loved being able to walk through Franklin Institute's giant heart (you get to be the "blood" and follow the path blood takes through the heart). And they had another exhibit that was supposed to be traveling through all the connections in the brain, but was basically just a big climbing thing for kids. She didn't like that there were flashing lights in an otherwise rather dark room, but once she got over that, she did it several times while her sisters read the other exhibits in that area in more detail.

Another favorite was an electricity exhibit. Fitting at the Franklin Institute huh? Though as one of the big girls pointed out, it's rather ironic that Ben Franklin gets so much credit for being the "Father of Electricity" when he was actually doing an incredibly STUPID thing by flying a kite, with a metal key on it, in a lightening storm. One of the exhibits had a metal ball that transmitted low voltage electricity to you when you touched it. You were then SUPPOSED to touch various other things in the exhibit (like a "windmill" looking thing and I don't remember what else) and transmit the electricity to it so that it would move. That didn't actually work well, but the girls discovered they could do some pretty impressing "shocking" of one another while one of them touched the ball. 

Another day recently, Lexie went on a baking spree. . . the night before, while watching a BBC series on life in Victorian England, she announced that she was making baked custard for breakfast. Which she did. The flavor was rather bland. I'm not sure if it was the recipe she used, or if our vanilla extract is old enough to not be as potent as most. But otherwise we all (well, except Daddy, but he doesn't like anything sweet, so we didn't expect him to like it) liked it ok. 

While searching for the custard recipe, she apparently came across a lemon curd recipe, because when breakfast was over she asked if she could make lemon curd. Our "history" that day was an audiobook, so we turned the volume up a bit and she made the lemon curd while listening to history. Once it was done, her sisters asked what she was going to use it for, so she decided to make scones to eat the lemon curd on. They turned out great, as did the lemon curd, and made for a yummy "lunch"! She made a half pint of lemon curd and I think it lasted slightly over 24 hours before it had all been eaten . . . once the scones were gone, the girls ate it on bread, so it was a big hit! 

Little Bit is enjoying her new "school" set up. And it's doing a pretty good job of achieving it's purpose of forcing me to actually get stuff together for her to do. One of her Bible stories was the wall of Jericho, so that week's activity was building "Jericho" out of toothpicks and marshmallows. It's hard to see because of the pattern on the table cloth, but she had fun building it.  

And then marching around it 7 times before tearing it down (and, of course, eating (some of) the marshmallows)!!

Lexie joined her in building a marshmallow/toothpick city, but her's was much more elaborate and after it was done, she didn't want to tear it down (and so, 2 weeks later, it continues to act as our centerpiece LOL). 

I discovered a homeschool/unschool facebook group that plan various field trips and get togethers and everyone just joins in on the ones that work for them. Perfect for us! Last week we went to a Maple Sugaring demonstration at a park. It was very well done. The teacher did a great job of keeping it simple enough for the preschoolers in the group, but explaining things in enough detail that the big girls and I found it interesting as well. The kids got to taste sap dripping straight from the tree, and learned about the various ways that trees have been tapped, going back to the way the Native Americans did it before Europeans were here, to the modern methods used now. Then she showed them how the sap is cooked down into syrup and finally cooked down even more into maple sugar. And everyone got to taste a little piece of the maple sugar. Very interesting, and well done! 

 This week we joined the group for another field trip. This one was at a wildlife conservation area only about 10 min from our house! I didn't even know it was there, will definitely be going back for nature walks and such regularly! Every year the snow geese "rest" on the lake there during their migration. So this week there were thousands (literally) of snow geese on the lake! One of the dads in the group is an avid birder and had the day off, so he brought his super fancy binocular-thingy and led the group, pointing out any birds he saw, including a blue heron rookery that he'd discovered (it was way far away, only visible through his binocular-thingy, and sooo cool!). He was great at answering questions and explaining things and did I mention THOUSANDS of geese . . . it was very impressive!

The weather this week has been amazing! Up into the 70s, sunny . . . heavenly! So instead of our normal weekly co-op, we all met at a park. Some of the swings were high enough for the big girls and moms to be able to swing without dragging their feet, so we had fun with that.

 And Ashlyn was pretty proud of herself when the baby, who was much too interested in everything going on around her to actually, willingly, take a nap, finally fell asleep while Ashlyn was holding her.

One of my reasons for setting things up in this house with the litter boxes in the garage, and a cat door between the house & the garage, besides the obvious (keeping the mess out of the house), was so that, when the weather is nice, I can open the garage door a little bit and hte cats can come and go as they please. So we've been doing that this week. Overall it's worked well, but I discovered an unexpected down side when we got home the other day and I walked into the laundry room and discovered a dead mole laying on the floor. My first thought, not thinking about the fact that I'd left the garage door open  enough for the cats to get in and out, was that they'd caught it IN the house, but then I realized that it's much more likely that one of the cats caught it and brought us a present, sigh . . . I guess as long as they deliver their presents to the laundry room and not, say my bedroom, AND that all presents are thoroughly dead, I can live with it, but EWWWWWWWWW!!!!

Experience Based Unschooling

It's always interesting to me how different my children are from each other. Whereas, by age 5, Lexie and Ashlyn had fallen into a "school" routine.  I have to admit, I keep expecting Little Bit to fall into a similar routine, but so far it hasn't happened. Once in awhile I'll create a schedule for her, but she just hasn't had the natural interest in formal learning that her sisters had by much younger. 

Recently I came across this article, and thought it might be an approach that could be adapted to work well for Little Bit. Not so much because I feel like she HAS to be "doing school" yet (while I tend to grumble extensively about the many hoops we must jump through to homeschool in PA, the one positive is that we don't have to start jumping through those hoops until age 8, so she still has another year before I have to actually keep track of any "school"), but because it would give me the structure *I* need to have a variety of options available for her on a regular basis instead of her randomly asking me to do something and me scrambling to figure out if I have what we need for it. 

So, over the weekend, I set up her new school system. I had this little 4 cube shelf in the entryway and hadn't really done anything with it (not sure it will live permanently in the entryway, I'm still figuring out furniture placement in this house, but for now, it works.  The basket on top is a book basket, I included her Jesus Storybook Bible that we're currently reading once a week for her Bible anyway, some picture books the correlate with what the big girls are doing in history, and some other random picture books off our shelf that I think she'd enjoy. I also had a Jim Weiss audio that correlates with the big girls' history that I think she'll enjoy, but I have it as an mp3 on my computer, so didn't have a "book" to put in her basket for that one. So I printed off a picture of the cover and laminated it, we'll see, going forward if I decide to print off all the Jim Weiss covers as we get to them, or if I make that the generic "Jim Weiss audio" indicator. 

The other basket on top of the shelf is her reading stuff. Lexie has been working with her on reading, somewhat sporadically. She uses the McGuffy's Primer and the foam letter tiles we have in the basement and spells the letters out with the tiles for Little Bit to read. I also have a .pdf that is copywork to go with the McGuffy's Primer so in this basket is the McGuffy's Primer, the copywork to go with the lesson they're on, and the plastic container has a combination of salt and glitter that she can trace letters/words in if she wants. I ask that they do at least one lesson per week.

One bin is the "Watch" bin. I didn't put much in this bin, because honestly, she watches plenty of TV on her own. I don't mind, it's mostly educational. Wild Kratts, Martha Speaks, Magic Schoolbus . . . but because she watches it without prompting I don't feel the need to encourage it, per se. But I did put in a science video that we have, the Samantha American Girl movie (Lexie just finished reading the Samantha books to her), and, since we were planning to go to an Ice Harvesting demonstration Sunday, but didn't because of weather, I printed out a picture of them harvesting ice, and laminated it, to indicate that we can watch a YouTube video on that this week. 

Another bin is the "play" bin. This is really a way to "force" me to take time to play games with her (though if she gets her sisters or Daddy to play with her instead, that's fine too), and a way to draw her attention to some games that she's old enough for, but hasn't noticed yet. I put 2 games she hasn't played, an "old favorite" (Sorry), and a puzzle in the bin for this week.

The "Create" bin will, not doubt, be a favorite bin for her, and was one of the main things that attracted me to this idea. She LOVES doing anything arts & crafts related, but I'm really bad about taking the time to pull things together for her to do crafts. My hope is that this will "force" me to pull together all the "pieces" for several art projects each week. I want each week to include a variety of different art medium. For this week I included: Sculpt - a package of model magic, Paint - a suncatcher paint kit, fiber - the "learn to tie your shoe" thing the big girls had when they were little, the printable (make a booklet by drawing pictures) that goes along with this week's Jesus Storybook Bible story, and the other thing for this week, that I still need to pull the pieces together for, is a ladybug craft (milk carton lids, black paint, googly eyes, glue). Also, when I was looking for videos for the "Watch" bin, I was reminded that we have some See the Light DVDs that Little Bit might be ready for, so I put one of them in too. Only problem is, I'll have to hunt down the required art supplies AFTER we watch the first part of the DVD. But we'll see how it works out. 

 And finally, the "Active" bin. Again, a big part of this is to get ME to be more intentional about having activities ready for her. The plastic bag has a "toss game" that the big girls had when they were younger. I found it when I was unpacking. Another activity that goes with this week's Jesus Storybook Bible story is a version of "red light, green light" so I printed a picture of a stoplight & laminated it. I have directions saved for how to dance the Virginia Reel, and figured all 3 girls could try that out as a part of history, so I printed out a picture of people dancing the Virginia Reel and laminated it and added it to the bin. I also have a geography game where I printed out full page pictures of each continent and laminated them. The game is a poem that names all the continent and then mom calls out the names of random continents for kids to jump to. I was still working on laminating the pages when I took these pictures but it's in there now.

She doesn't have to do all the bins every day, I told her she could pick 2, and she said "is that all?" so I changed it to "at least 2". Some days she might do all the bins, some days, not so many. I'm hoping to keep at least 3 or 4 things in each bin (adding new as she uses some of them), so she always has plenty of options. If she consistently passes over something for a couple weeks I'll pull it out and assume it doesn't interest her.

And one final basket. The basket on the floor next to the shelves is our "done" basket. After we read a book or she does a craft or plays a game or . . . anything she is to put it in the "done" basket. That way I can check in the evening and know for sure what school she's done, and what bins I might need to replenish. It also means that art supplies that we'll use again (paint, etc) gets put where I can find it,  library books don't get lost, etc. It will also be useful if we continue with this approach long-term because I can use the "done" basket to keep records once she's old enough that we have to report to the state.

I used chalkboard labels on each bin, and for the baskets I stuck chalkboard labels onto colored paper and punched holes in the paper to tie the labels onto the baskets. I'm hoping to get chalkboard markers soon, which will, I think, be "brighter" and less likely to wipe off, but for now I used chalk pastels to write on the labels.

Catching Up . . .

I'm not doing well with blogging regularly, am I? We've been busy, but not doing anything too earth-shattering. Here are a few pictures from the past month or so . . . 

Don't think I ever posted pictures of the wall decals Little Bit got for Christmas. This is the wall under her loft bed, isn't it perfect? 

As some of you might remember, for Lexie and Ashlyn's 7th birthday, we went to the American Girl store in New York City and they each chose a doll and some accessories, and we had tea in the cafe.  I was starting to think we wouldn't be doing similar for Little Bit's 7th birthday. Whereas Lexie and Ashlyn enjoyed the American Girl books starting when they were 5, it was just recently that Little Bit has decided they're interesting. But, just in time for her birthday next month, she has dived head first into the world of American Girl.

So we WILL be having another American Girl 7th birthday after all. She has decided that the doll she wants is Samantha. And she wanted to get Samantha's bed since both her sisters have a bed for one of their dolls. However, while Josefina and Kit both had reasonably (for American Girl stuff) priced beds, Samantha's is much less reasonable. So, Lexie to the rescue! She has made a bed for Samantha. She made it in an afternoon out of a cardboard box! And then went through our fabric bin and button box and made a comforter for the bed over the next couple of days. Little Bit rearranged things under her loft bed in preparation for Samantha's arrival :)

While our BIG snow of the winter was the topic of my previous post, we did get a beautiful snow storm a couple weeks ago. It was truly beautiful, snowing most of the day, and turning the whole world into a powder-sugar covered landscape. As an added bonus, the temperatures were near freezing so, while we enjoyed a quiet day at home, we COULD have gone out if we'd had to.

Our rather quiet winter has led to lots of creativity from the kiddos. One afternoon as I sat in the living room a piece of yarn dropped down through a knot-hole in the ceiling (which is also the floorboards of Lexie and Little Bit's room). When all was said and done, Lexie and Little Bit had created a tin-can telephone from their room to the living room.

A week ago, Friday, Little Bit and Ashlyn noticed a stray cat in our yard. Ashlyn went out and "made friends" with it and wanted to bring it inside. While it WAS a very cold day, I assumed, especially since it was a very friendly little cat, that it lived somewhere nearby, so vetoed the idea of letting it in the house. However, the next morning when I went into the sunroom for my morning Bible time, I noticed that there were quite a few cat footprints in the dusting of snow we'd gotten overnight right outside the sliding door. It had been down near zero overnight, so not a night for a cat to be out and about :(

We headed out to church, and a busy Sabbath. It was "Jean Sabbath" when we do various community service projects in the afternoon. For the last several months Ashlyn has been asking to go pass out food and other things to the homeless downtown, but Lexie and Little Bit have wanted to help provide crafts and games at Olivet (the Big Brothers/Big Sisters center downtown). For various reasons we've ended up doing the crafts and games, so finally this month I told Ashlyn that I would take her to pass out lunches while Rodney took Lexie and Little Bit to Olivet. It was AFTER I agreed to that, that I realized the HIGH TEMPERATURE that day was going to be 15 F!! Brrrrrr . . . but we survived. People were very appreciative of the food AND coats that had been donated for us to pass out. AND because it was so cold, we didn't waste any extra time outside, so as it turned out, Ashlyn and I got to Olivet just as they were starting the crafts, so she was able to help with that too.

When we finally got home late Sabbath afternoon, the above mentioned cat came running across the yard toward us. Much as we DO NOT need another cat, I couldn't, in good conscience, leave it outside in weather THAT cold, when I knew it hadn't had a place to go the night before. So, I told Ashlyn to bring it inside until the cold snap was past. She's a pretty little thing (Ashlyn is guessing she's around 9 mo old, based on her research), and looks quite a bit like Lexie's first cat, Socks. Socks ran away several years ago, and soon after that one of the strays that came and ate on our porch at our first house in PA looked somewhat similar and was christened Socks Jr. Which makes this cat Socks the Third, or Tre.  It only took her a day to figure out the cat door and litter box, and she's very friendly with people, and amazingly tolerant of Little Bit carrying her around and generally mauling her, but she continues to growl at the other cats whenever they get close, and generally not play nice with them. So we shall see . . . once it warmed up, we put her outside and she ran off over the hill, so I thought that might be that, but at bedtime she came back. And again yesterday, she was outside, but came back at bedtime, so she seems to have claimed us as home base.

We've been having lots of fun with school during the cold winter days, so conducive to indoor activities. We're using the Jesus Storybook Bible for Little Bit's Bible this year, and doing fun hands-on activities and crafts to go along with each story. The activity for the story of crossing the red sea was to create a shaving cream "red sea" for her plastic people to walk through. I'm not sure the sea ever parted or people ever walked through, but she had GREAT fun playing with the shaving cream :)

Lexie came to me last week and said she needed a flower to dissect for science. Ummmm . . . couldn't you have planned things to do that particular experiment when, getting a flower was as simple as going outside and picking a wild flower? Of course not, that would be too easy! However, she pointed out that they had passed carnations out to all the adults at church for Valentine's Day, so I had 2 carnations in a vase on the kitchen window sill. She insisted that one of those flowers was Daddy's and HE didn't care about flowers, so she should be able to dissect HIS flower. And that is what happened. . . it's amazing how different a carnation looks once it's been dissected, isn't it? I was busy with other things when she and Little Bit dissected it, but she said it was really cool!

For supper one night last week Lexie took her first stab at making homemade, sourdough pita bread. They got abit brown, but overall turned out quite well. They tasted great with the falafel and tzatziki sauce she made for supper, and even had the pocket that pita bread is supposed to have! Definitely something she'll be doing again, YUM!

And that pretty much catches us up. As proof of how weird our weather is this winter, last Sabbath's high was 15, and yesterday's high was 60!!!

Free Geography Curriculum!!!!

Just a quick post to let you know that TODAY!!!  Homeschool Giveaways is giving away a FREE US History curriculum! I haven't had time to look it over to see if it will be something that will work for us, but since it's only free today, I wanted to let you know about it while there's time!

http://homeschoolgiveaways.com/50-states-and-where-to-find-them/?c127020Le

SNOW DAY!!!

As you probably know, we, along with most of the mid-Atlantic, got a little bit of snow in the past day or so!

The snow started Friday evening and stopped last night. I have no idea how anyone is measuring snow because it was so windy, there are patches where I can see the grass (or, at least at some point yesterday, the pavement on the driveway) and places where it's up to the windows. I think one report says we got around 2 feet. . .

Anyway, thought I'd share a few pictures. All pictures are taken through the windows because I had no interest in going out in the cold! And it was so windy that I saw no point in shoveling if the wind was just going to move the snow right back where I'd shoveled. TODAY I don't have that excuse, so guess I'll be getting some good exercise today LOL.

The (covered) front porch has a rather impressive drift on it.

This was relatively early in the day. Looking out the sliding glass door along the back of the garage. Pretty sure we won't be using that back door for a day or two! 

Little Bit convinced Lexie to take her out to play. It was too deep to walk, too deep to sled. Too powdery to build things . . . but they were out for a little while, came in frozen solid and very happy that Ashlyn was making hot chocolate!

The cats and I preferred to sit in the sunroom and watch the snow. Though at one point when I was in the laundry room Moccasin was acting like he wanted me to let him out, so I opened the door (that would be the door in the above picture) he looked rather confusedly at the snow blocking the door, then a piece fell and hit him square in the face. He jumped, glared at me, and stalked away LOL.

Later in the day Lexie convinced Ashlyn to go out with them too. They dug a fort of sorts and were out there for quite awhile. I burst out laughing when they came in. Ashlyn's white hat, well encrusted with snow, makes her look like she's turning into a snowman! 

The birdbath gives you an idea how deep the snow is at least right there.

This is the door I opened for Moccasin (though it wasn't that high yet when I opened it for him). That is all snow! 

Looking out the dining room window. I love how the wind caked the snow on some of ht windows, making it look like a Christmas card with snow framing the edges :) 

The sliding door in the sunroom. I think it's even higher now.

Little Bit was "torturing" Daddy last night :)

God woke me up early this morning to have my quiet time with Him. The snow and wind have stopped and now it's all so beautiful and peaceful and perfect! Much as I'm not a morning person, I'm glad I was awake to watch the sun rise this morning!

And while taking pictures of the sunrise, I noticed that, now that it's not snowing and blowing, I can actually see the "fort" the girls made yesterday, so took a picture of it too :) 

God is good! I was nervous about losing power since we have electric heat, and haven't gotten the wood stove working yet, but it never even blinked. While I feel that everything we do at our church is important, and what He wants us to be doing right now, I was feeling burned out by it all. The snow storm came Friday night, giving us a wonderful, peaceful, RESTFUL Sabbath day! We snuggled under blankets and read and watched Drive Thru History and cooked and ate yummy food and the kids played outside. It was just what I needed!

And now, we are still rather thoroughly snowed in and plan to enjoy it while it lasts :)